Regional geography

Regional geography is a major branch of [geography]. It focuses on the interaction of different cultural and natural geofactors in a specific land or landscape, while its counterpart, systematic geography, concentrates on a specific geofactor at the global level.

Basics

Attention is paid to unique characteristics of a particular region such as natural elements, human elements, and regionalization which covers the techniques of delineating space into regions. Rooted in the tradition of the German speaking countries, the two pillars of regional geography are the idiographic study of Länder or spatial individuals (specific places, countries, continents) and the typological study of Landschaften or spatial types (landscapes such as coastal regions, mountain regions, border regions, etc.).

Approach

Regional geography is also a certain approach to geographical study, comparable to quantitative geography or critical geography. This approach prevailed during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, a period when then regional geography paradigm was central within the geographical sciences. It was later criticised for its descriptiveness and the lack of theory. Strong criticism was leveled against it in particular during the 1950s and the quantitative revolution. Main critics were G. H. T. Kimble[1] and Fred K. Schaefer.[2] The regional geography paradigm has influenced many other geographical sciences, including economic geography and geomorphology. Regional geography is still taught in some universities as a study of the major regions of the world, such as Northern and Latin America, Europe, and Asia and their countries. In addition, the notion of a city-region approach to the study of geography, underlining urban-rural interactions, gained credence since the mid-1980s. Some geographers have also attempted to reintroduce a certain amount of regionalism since the 1980s. This involves a complex definition of regions and their interactions with other scales.[3]

Alfred Hettner (August 6, 1859 in Dresden – August 31, 1941 in Heidelberg) was a German geographer.

He is known for his concept of chorology, the study of places and regions, a concept that influenced both Carl O. Sauer and Richard Hartshorne. Apart from Europe, his field work concentrated mainly on Colombia, Chile and Russia.

Alfred Hettner, who obtained his PhD from the University of Strasbourg, was also a pupil of Ferdinand von Richthofen and Friedrich Ratzel in Leipzig—where he obtained his habilitation. His book Europe was published in 1907. According to him, geography is a chorological science or it is a study of regions. Hettner rejected the view that geography could be either general or regional. Geography like other fields of learning, must deal in both the unique things (regional geography) and with universal (general geography), but the study of regions — especially in the form of his Länderkunde approach — is the main field of geography. Hettner supervised, among others, the PhDs of Oskar Schmieder, Friedrich Metz and Heinrich Schmitthenner.

The Anton Melik Geographical Institute (Slovene: Geografski inštitut Antona Melika) was founded in 1946 by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 1976 it was named after the Slovene geographer and academy member Anton Melik (1890–1966), who was the first head of the institute. Since 1981, the institute has been a member of the Scientific Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Until 1992 the institute was mainly engaged with researching glaciers, glacial and fluvial transformations of land surfaces, flooded areas, natural disasters, mountain farms, and social geography. Since 1993 the institute's main task has been to conduct geographical studies of Slovenia and its landscapes and to prepare basic geographical texts on Slovenia as a country and as part of the world.

Research is mostly directed toward physical, social, and regional geography and thematic cartography.

The Atapuerca Mountains (Spanish: Sierra de Atapuerca) is a karstic hill formation near the village of Atapuerca, in the Province of Burgos (autonomous community of Castile and Leon), northern Spain. In a still ongoing excavation campaign, rich fossil deposits and stone tool assemblages were discovered which are attributed to the earliest known hominin residents in Western Europe. This "exceptional reserve of data" has been deposited during extensive Lower Paleolithic presence, as the Atapuerca Mountains served as the preferred occupation site of Homo erectus, Homo antecessor (or Homo erectus antecessor), Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis communities. The earliest specimen so far unearthed and reliably dated confirm an age between 1.2 Million and 630,000 years. Some finds are exhibited in the nearby Museum of Human Evolution, in Burgos. The site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, under the name, Archaeological Site of Atapuerca.

Chorography (from χῶρος khōros, "place" and γράφειν graphein, "to write") is the art of describing or mapping a region or district, and by extension such a description or map. This term derives from the writings of the ancient geographer Pomponius Mela and Ptolemy, where it meant the geographical description of regions. However, its resonances of meaning have varied at different times. Richard Helgerson states that "chorography defines itself by opposition to chronicle. It is the genre devoted to place, and chronicle is the genre devoted to time". Darrell Rohl prefers a broad definition of "the representation of space or place".

A geographer is a scientist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society. The Greek prefix, "geo," means "earth" and the Greek suffix, "graphy," meaning "description," so a geographer is someone who studies the earth. The word "geography" is a Middle French word that is believed to have been first used in 1540.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography. Geographers do not study only the details of the natural environment or human society, but they also study the reciprocal relationship between these two. For example, they study how the natural environment contributes to human society and how human society affects the natural environment.

In particular, physical geographers study the natural environment while human geographers study human society. Modern geographers are the primary practitioners of the GIS (geographic information system), who are often employed by local, state, and federal government agencies as well as in the private sector by environmental and engineering firms.

The paintings by Johannes Vermeer titled The Geographer and The Astronomer are both thought to represent the growing influence and rise in prominence of scientific enquiry in Europe at the time of their painting in 1668–69.

Geography (from Greek: γεωγραφία, geographia, literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of the Earth and planets. The first person to use the word γεωγραφία was Eratosthenes (276–194 BC). Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be.

Geography is often defined in terms of two branches: human geography and physical geography. Human geography deals with the study of people and their communities, cultures, economies, and interactions with the environment by studying their relations with and across space and place. Physical geography deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere.

The four historical traditions in geographical research are: spatial analyses of natural and the human phenomena, area studies of places and regions, studies of human-land relationships, and the Earth sciences. Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical sciences".

The history of geography includes many histories of geography which have differed over time and between different cultural and political groups. In more recent developments, geography has become a distinct academic discipline. 'Geography' derives from the Greek γεωγραφία – geographia, a literal translation of which would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes (276–194 BC). However, there is evidence for recognizable practices of geography, such as cartography (or map-making) prior to the use of the term geography.

Human geography or anthropogeography is the branch of geography that deals with the study of people and their communities,

cultures, economies, and interactions with the environment by studying their relations with and across space and place. Human geography attends to human patterns of social interaction, as well as spatial level interdependencies, and how they influence or affect the earth's environment. As an intellectual discipline, geography is divided into the sub-fields of physical geography and human geography, the latter concentrating upon the study of human activities, by the application of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Geography is the study of the world and of the distribution of life on the earth, including human life and the effects of human activity. Geography research addresses both the questions of where, as well as why, geographical phenomena occur. Geography is a diverse field that seeks to understand the world and all of its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but how they came to be, and how they have changed since then.

Mirna (pronounced [ˈmiːɾna]; German: Neydeck or Neudegg) is a nucleated village and a minor economic centre in central Lower Carniola, Slovenia. It is the largest settlement of the Mirna Valley and the centre of the Municipality of Mirna. It is situated at the crossing of regional roads and a confluence of several creeks with the Mirna River, along the railway line linking Sevnica and Trebnje.

The Mountain States (also known as the Mountain West and the Interior West) form one of the nine geographic divisions of the United States that are officially recognized by the United States Census Bureau. It is a subregion of the Western United States.

The Mountain States generally are considered to include: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The words "Mountain States" generally refer to the US States which encompass the US Rocky Mountains. These are oriented north-south through portions of the states of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. Arizona and Nevada, as well as other parts of Utah and New Mexico, have other smaller mountain ranges and scattered mountains located in them as well. Sometimes, the Trans-Pecos area of West Texas is considered part of the region. The land area of the eight states together is some 855,767 square miles (2,216,426 square kilometers).

The quantitative revolution (QR)[n] was a paradigm shift that sought to develop a more rigorous and systematic methodology for the discipline of geography. It came as a response to the inadequacy of regional geography to explain general spatial dynamics. The main claim for the quantitative revolution is that it led to a shift from a descriptive (idiographic) geography to an empirical law-making (nomothetic) geography. The quantitative revolution occurred during the 1950s and 1960s and marked a rapid change in the method behind geographical research, from regional geography into a spatial science.In the history of geography, the quantitative revolution was one of the four major turning-points of modern geography – the other three being environmental determinism, regional geography and critical geography).

The quantitative revolution had occurred earlier in economics and psychology and contemporaneously in political science and other social sciences and to a lesser extent in history.

In geography, regions are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and the environment (environmental geography). Geographic regions and sub-regions are mostly described by their imprecisely defined, and sometimes transitory boundaries, except in human geography, where jurisdiction areas such as national borders are defined in law.

Apart from the global continental regions, there are also hydrospheric and atmospheric regions that cover the oceans, and discrete climates above the land and water masses of the planet. The land and water global regions are divided into subregions geographically bounded by large geological features that influence large-scale ecologies, such as plains and features.

As a way of describing spatial areas, the concept of regions is important and widely used among the many branches of geography, each of which can describe areas in regional terms. For example, ecoregion is a term used in environmental geography, cultural region in cultural geography, bioregion in biogeography, and so on. The field of geography that studies regions themselves is called regional geography.

In the fields of physical geography, ecology, biogeography, zoogeography, and environmental geography, regions tend to be based on natural features such as ecosystems or biotopes, biomes, drainage basins, natural regions, mountain ranges, soil types. Where human geography is concerned, the regions and subregions are described by the discipline of ethnography.

A region has its own nature that could not be moved. The first nature is its natural environment (landform, climate, etc.). The second nature is its physical elements complex that were built by people in the past. The third nature is its socio-cultural context that could not be replaced by new immigrants.

Regional development is the provision of aid and other assistance to regions which are less economically developed. Regional development may be domestic or international in nature. The implications and scope of regional development may therefore vary in accordance with the definition of a region, and how the region and its boundaries are perceived internally and externally.

Sietse Rindert Fritsma (born 31 March 1972 in Franeker) is a Dutch politician and former civil servant. As a member of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid) he has been an MP since 30 November 2006. He focuses on matters of social affairs, employment, political asylum and immigration. From March 2010 till January 2011 he was also a member and PVV fraction leader of the municipal council of The Hague.

He previously worked for the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND).

Fritsma studied human geography at the University of Groningen. He obtained a master's degree in spatial science, specializing in regional geography of developing countries. Around 1990 he lived for a year in an Israeli kibbutz.

The Hundred Parishes is an area of the East of England with no formal recognition or status, albeit that the concept has the blessing of county and district authorities. It encompasses around 450 square miles (1,100 square kilometres) of northwest Essex, northeast Hertfordshire and southern Cambridgeshire. The area comprises just over 100 administrative parishes, hence its name. It contains over 6,000 listed buildings and many conservation areas, village greens, ancient hedgerows, protected features and a historical pattern of small rural settlements in close proximity to one another.

Tihaboj (pronounced [ˈtiːxabɔi̯]; in older sources also Tihoboj) is a nucleated settlement in the local community of Gabrovka, Municipality of Litija, central Slovenia. It lies on a terrace in the Gabrovka Hills (Slovene: Gabrovško gričevje), a part of the Mirna Valley, along the road connecting Litija and Mirna. The landscape has a fluviokarst character. The settlement comprises the hamlets of Mlake, Orešje, and Psina. The residents mainly live from farming and service activities; many of them drive to work to nearby places.

The Tonto Basin, also known as Pleasant Valley, covers the main drainage of Tonto Creek and its tributaries in central Arizona, at the southwest of the Mogollon Rim, the higher elevation transition zone across central and eastern Arizona.

Tonto Basin is mostly north-south trending and outflows into the Salt River at the extensive canyon reservoir called Theodore Roosevelt Lake.

Arizona Route 188 traverses the lower Tonto Basin on the southwest side of Theodore Roosevelt Lake; it then merges at the water divide northeast of the Mazatzals, with State route 87 which proceeds to Payson and further to Kohls Ranch and Christopher Creek at the basin headwaters at the foot of the Mogollon Rim.

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